Titan's Fall

by Zachary Brown

  The living starship hauled itself into the air, fields compressing down around it as the gloom filled with a sudden onslaught of fire and weaponry aimed against the Pcholem. Crickets and human beings slid off in the air to fall down to the ground as Starswept accelerated away.

  We were on our own.

  6

  The basin floor crawled with a flood of human forms and scrabbling Crickets balling up to attack positions in the foothills. Ken perched on a rock to look downslope. “Crickets and drivers,” he said. “I’m not seeing any trolls or raptors.”

  “Yet,” I said.

  “Yet,” Ken agreed. We watched a wave of Conglomeration surge against the lower slopes. Second Platoon struggled to keep them at bay, falling back in careful staggered lines with well-coordinated fire.

  “They’re rushing us, Amira.” I turned back to where Amira, the rest of the platoon, and fifteen other soldiers pulled in from the hilltops were slowly shoving the anti-spacecraft energy weapon into place. It wasn’t mounted; Amira had to have it moved onto a large cairn of boulders and rocks hastily built for it.

  Barricades at HQ. Rock piles. We were stretching.

  Soldiers were pushing up the rear of the barrel and stacking rocks under the cannon’s stand to get the weapon aimed down into the basin.

  “We have three covering the tunnel,” Ken said. “We can’t risk blowing the cable down.”

  “So, we’re vulnerable on the hill and from below.”

  “Just from below now,” Amira said. She walked over to stand with us and raised a hand. “Fire!”

  The energy cannon fired, a subsonic thud. The air around the tip rippled; energy lanced out. A line of blinding light jumped out to hit the basin. Five at the back were moving the barrel around as Amira started calling out targets.

  A halfhearted response came in gunfire. Then a small wave of Crickets swarmed toward the hill. Amira stopped calling out directions and pulled out the EPC-1. Massive clumps of Crickets tumbled to a stop after she fired; the rest veered off and wheeled back toward Shangri-La’s tunnels.

  Cheers came over the common channel.

  “They can still kill the dark matter reactor down there.” Amira slung the EPC-1 back over her shoulder.

  “And we don’t have much in the way of ammo, other than what we carried up here,” Ken said.

  “We just need to give the folk upstairs enough time to drop reinforcements,” I said.

  “If the reactor goes offline?” Amira asked on the command channel.

  I let out a deep breath. “I don’t know.”

  “Now is the time to figure rally points,” Ken said.

  “Where?” I asked through gritted teeth. “If they’re boiling up out of the ground, where do we go? How do we know where to go? We leave this spot, we walk into what?”

  “We sit here and fight to the last?” Amira’s voice dripped scorn. “You know my feelings about that crap. I’m here to survive. I’m not here to throw my life away to either the Accordance or the Conglomeration.”

  I opened my mouth but was cut off by a familiar voice. “Third Platoon, this is Commander Barbera Charet.”

  Relief washed over me. “HQ, go for Third.”

  “Upstairs has marching orders, Lieutenant,” Charet said. “I need you and your team to detonate the weapons foundry and hold the power plant until the ships get down here.”

  I looked up at the cannon. “Right now we’re holding a hill and directing fire down—”

  “I know. That’s why I’m choosing you. The foundry has a few bombs big enough to destroy access to it; you’ll know what to do.” Charet coughed and went silent for a second.

  “How long will it take for backup to arrive?” I asked.

  Silence.

  “HQ?”

  The sound of gunfire cracked the channel open. An explosion. “I’m going to have to get back to you,” Charet said.

  “HQ? HQ? Commander Charet?”

  I looked over at Ken and Amira. “We have orders,” I said on the common channel. “Charlie, Alpha, you’re going to split off with me. We’re headed down to take the reactor and hold it until help arrives from upstairs.”

  “HQ just went down,” Amira said up on the command channel.

  “And we have orders. We hold the reactor, we can hold the hills. You know, Amira, the only way off this planet is up. Ken, Delta and Bravo stay with you. Keep sweeping the basin.”

  “There’s a good chance anyone going down there dies,” Amira said. “It’s crawling with Conglomerate forces.”

  “I’ve been there before. It makes sense, Amira.”

  Amira walked over to the tunnel and looked down. “You’re going to need someone who can open doors and hold your hand. Also, you don’t want to go down this tunnel.”

  “Why not?”

  “They’re waiting for you there. They won’t be waiting for you somewhere else in the middle of the basin.”

  I wasn’t going to ask or order her. I knew her position. “Okay. We’re going downhill. Alpha takes point. Charlie covers our asses.”

  “You need me to open doors,” Amira repeated.

  “Let’s go, Rockhoppers,” I said, with a calmness I didn’t feel in any way. And beside me, leaping up over the hilltop and down with us, was Amira.

  “Thank you,” I said on the command channel.

  “I’m thinking, before we blow up the foundry, I want to pick up some more weapons,” she said.

  + + +

  We boogied down the tunnel after unleashing lightning from the hilltop along our chosen path to force everything well back. Charred bodies lay around the basin as we pelted down into it, hopping and bouncing our way along.

  Amira came in behind us, hitting even higher and longer jumps into the air and firing her EPC-1. She left a swathe of twitching Crickets on the ground.

  “Left,” I ordered.

  We veered and hit the inside of a loading bay, preceded by a hailstorm of our own bullets before we dropped in.

  “Amira?”

  “I’m worming my way into the networks. No ghost sign.”

  Good. This was the old routine. The first routine, really. Amira had used all that black-market Accordance nano-ink technology buried under her skin to look around corners, check out surveillance video.

  The doors opened and we scooted through. Under Amira’s guidance, we began moving through bulkheads and doors, section by section. One squad would provide cover while the other moved. Then we switched places. Doors opened under Amira’s thoughtful pauses, and then we’d keep going.

  Left, right, down, someone with a driver on their back attacking us. Kill. Crickets, stomp and kill. Drivers, open fire.

  We spent five minutes jammed up near the foundry as one of the Driven came at us in full armor. But we’d known it was there, thanks to Amira.

  Amira came around the corner with the EPC-1 and hit the armor, and then ducked out. Zizi Dimka hit it with an RPG, and Chaka sniped the driver right in the head halfway down to the ground.

  Amira walked into the foundry and looked around. “Grab all the extra ammo you can stand to carry,” she said to everyone. “Level up to something with more punch if you need it. Devlin, the bombs are for jumpships. They will need to be dragged out to this bulkhead, and the next one. Should bury it enough.”

  Charlie squad sat on the bulkhead doors, covering our asses as we set up. Amira tripped the timers, and then we hoofed it down the corridors again, moving down through the basin’s warrens.

  The bodies in the corridors weren’t soldiers anymore. They were contractors in overalls or simple day clothes. A cross section of humanity, lifted out from different continents with the promise of work and a chance to help keep humanity safe.

  Here on Titan, we didn’t see all the anti-Conglomeration videos. Having seen battle, we didn’t need
it. But in downtime, the platoon had uploaded some of what Earth was seeing. The Conglomeration’s work on other worlds: stripping them of life and keeping only the forms and genetic material that interested them. The Conglomeration had needs, niches that could be filled, and it would take life and reshape it, mold it, to fit any of those needs.

  On the moon, we’d seen living heat shields that lived on the outside of a Conglomerate starship. They’d once been a thinking, intelligent race like ours.

  I wondered if these people had come here out of a desire to fight, to help the war effort. Or if they’d been starving in refugee camps run by the Accordance and saw no other way out.

  Gunfire. We hit the walls and skidded to stops.

  “We’re CPF,” I called out on the common. “Identify yourself.”

  “How do we know you’re CPF?” came the reply.

  “Because we didn’t try to kill you,” Amira said irritably, and walked around the bulkhead out into the open. She flicked her helmet open. “Now—”

  Someone shot at her, the single pop loud and bright in the tight space.

  Amira moved, blurringly fast. She grabbed someone in blue overalls and pulled a handgun out of their hand. “I’m going to say that you’re having a bad day and a little over-nervous,” she said. “That is why I have not killed you. But I am obviously not Conglomerate.”

  She tossed him back toward a group of people in lab coats, overalls, and day clothes. Behind them were heavy blast windows, control rooms, miles of complex alien machinery plunging down into the ground. Gantries and crosswalks laced the air above the reactor pit.

  One of the engineers in an environment suit stepped forward. “Apologies,” he said. “We’re trying to hold the reactor.”

  Amira held the handgun out to him. “This should be yours. Who are you?”

  “Anton Dismont; I’m one of the chief engineers,” he said, and then waved the gun away. “I’m afraid I’m more likely to kill one of you by accident with that than help. Are you here to save us?”

  Amira looked back at me. “Alas,” she said. “We’ve been sent here to help secure the reactor until help arrives.”

  Dismount slumped a little. “We’re still under attack.”

  “Very much so. For now,” I said. Then on the command channel: “Amira, can you get me a big boost on the common so I can get a message out to everyone?”

  “Thinking of replacing HQ?”

  “Yes. We have the power plant. Now let’s start securing the base.”

  Amira raised an eyebrow.

  I gave the mental command, and my helmet snapped open and slid into the back of my armor. “If we have the plant, then the hills are secure. Get me on the common channel, Amira.”

  I couldn’t tell if she shrugged, but her silvered eyes looked upward, as if she was recalling something. “You’re live, Lieutenant.”

  Ignoring her slight mocking tone, I said, “All platoons, this is Devlin Hart. We have the power plant secured. The hills are still ours, even though the Conglomeration has taken the tunnels. But now it’s time take back Shangri-La.

  “I need volunteer squads to get down here. It will be door by door, but we have a systems specialist that you can coordinate with. Let’s flush them the hell back to wherever they came from!”

  + + +

  Amira broke out of her trance, mind running deep inside Shangri-La’s networks.

  “How many?” I asked.

  “Three thousand got into the hills,” she said wearily. “Platoons agreed to send down a thousand to try and secure the tunnels.”

  “And?”

  “I got them in,” she said. “Staggered opening doors to let them clear through by sections. Most of the cable tunnels are secure. A few hundred are fanning out from those points. They’re breaking back into HQ, but it’s heavy with drivers and raptors there. And that’s about as far as we can go right now. And, Devlin?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Stop pacing. You’re in armor. You’re making the engineers nervous.”

  I stopped and looked around. The civilians were staring at me.

  “We need more boots in the tunnels,” I said.

  “The other officers won’t,” Amira said. “They want the hills covered. A way out.”

  “Well, we get HQ back at least,” I muttered. “But we can pull this all back.”

  The sound of gunfire interrupted me. I moved up toward the doors and glanced up the tunnel at Lana Smalley. “Smiley?”

  “Clear!”

  I stomped back to Amira. “HQ? Anyone alive?”

  She smiled. “They found only bodies. They’re holding it now, though.”

  For now.

  This was all a balancing act that could go horribly wrong so quickly, I realized. And it would take days, or weeks, to clear everything out down here.

  But it was possible.

  It was damn possible.

  “HQ incoming,” Amira said.

  “Who’s taken command?” I asked.

  “The officers are still in the hills. Privates who volunteered to push through,” she said. “They have a link upstairs. They’re saying other bases are scattering to the plains; they’re managing to get uplinks and orbital bombardment support.”

  “Are we expected to abandon the base as well?” I asked.

  “No. If we can hold, we are to stay put. However, other officers on the plains and some Accordance chatter are rumoring something big is up from everyone upstairs.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “It’s fucking alien high command,” Amira said. “They’re not going to tell us ‘apes,’ are they?”

  7

  Ken popped back into the command channel. “We can’t call down orbital strikes on Shangri-La itself; they won’t engage until we’re out in the open and headed for rally points.”

  I looked over at Amira. “But HQ is still telling us to stay put?”

  She’d been glazed over, off in a world of networks to help coordinate clearing out the tunnels for hours. She looked exhausted.

  “Amira?”

  “We’re still staying put,” she said, an edge to her voice. “But raptors are running around everywhere, and everyone’s starting to run low on ammunition. We shouldn’t have blown the foundry.”

  “We had orders,” I muttered.

  Amira didn’t bother to respond.

  Min Zhao’s voice came in on the command channel. The four squad leaders had been keeping quiet, leaving most of the chatter to Amira, Ken, and me. They stayed on their squad’s entangled comms mostly. “Everyone, we have a very large breakout that is coming up the foothills.”

  “How bad?”

  “Thirty or forty raptors in armor, a couple drivers, big cloud of crickets,” she reported.

  “Are you in danger?” I asked.

  “They’re going after First Platoon. They might have to abandon their spot. But that’s not why I’m calling in.”

  I cocked my head. “What’s up, Max?”

  “They’re being led by an Arvani in armor,” she said. “And it’s broadcasting on the common. You should hear this.”

  “Amira, you hearing this?” I asked.

  “I’m hunting for the signal,” she said. And then the sound kicked on for me.

  “Do not resist the Conglomeration,” a familiar voice said. “You have lost on all the other worlds you fought for. You will lose here as well. The Conglomeration is stronger than you or the Accordance. But if you surrender now, walk away from your positions, you will have a place in the Conglomeration. A great place. You won’t have to live under the pressure of the Accordance’s grip. You will have freedom. You can have self-determination. You can have riches.”

  “That Arvani . . . ,” Ken said.

  “There is a further bounty, however, for those willing to pro
ve their true allegiance to the new order that comes to this world. A promotion to high status, and the natural benefits that will stick to you with this. The bounty I will give to anyone who hands over the following three humans here: Devlin Hart, Amira Singh, and Ken Awojobi.”

  “Seems like you’ve got a fan,” Zhao said.

  “I killed your kind in great schools on the moon of your homeworld,” the voice continued. “I will kill all that oppose me here.”

  Amira blinked right out of her trance and we stared at each other. “It’s Zeus,” we both said.

  “Zeus?” Lana Smalley asked. “The defector from Icarus Base? That Arvani is dead, along with all the other Conglomeration there.”

  “Obviously not,” Amira said.

  “It could be just some other Arvani who went over to the Conglomeration?” Min suggested.

  “With a personal vendetta. No. It’s Zeus.” I was sure of it.

  “First Platoon is falling back, they can’t hold. We lost the gun.”

  “This is HQ on the common,” came an interruption. “Pickup is coming. Pickup is coming. Get down into the basin, hold off any enemy, and get aboard.”

  “They’re abandoning HQ now,” Amira said. “They just don’t have the ammo to hold off the raptors in the tunnels. Everyone is running topside.”

  I wanted to punch something. If we’d been able to dig out the foundry, get more ammo . . . maybe. Amira saw what I was thinking and shook her head.

  “Ken, keep on the gun as long as you can to hit anything Conglomerate out on the basin.”

  “Until the guns are blown, they’ll need power,” I said. Gunfire chattered from up the tunnel again as Alpha and Charlie stopped something in its tracks that was coming at us. “And there are civilians down here, we’ll need to escort them up.”

  “It’s going to be a zoo up there,” Amira said.

  “I know.” I looked around at the unarmored engineers in their bright-yellow plastic-looking vacuum suits and rubbed my forehead. “I know.”

  + + +

  Two hilltop anti-spacecraft weapons had been seized by several humans with drivers on their backs, protected by five raptors. They spat lines of energy into the sky, lancing around at the jumpships weaving around to try to get into the basin.